


Solitary

by Bullfinch



Series: After Kirkwall [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Imprisonment, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 19:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4847813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short tag to the After Kirkwall series. Dorian and Bull have a much-needed talk in the dungeons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitary

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: The relevant bits to this particular story are in the 5th and 6th installments of the series. Truth be told, I was planning to let Dorian and Bull’s part of things reach its natural conclusion, without any intervention, but after playing Trespasser I felt motivated to give them a little more.
> 
> First time writing Dorian's POV. Hopefully my characterizations of him and Bull are up to par now. Always open for constructive criticism!

“He was lying, incidentally.”

Dorian starts and almost drops his book. Hawke’s standing by the banister. Dorian never saw or heard him. The man’s a shadow. A very large shadow. “I thought you’d left,” he mutters. The trial is over, and Hawke and his talent for charm have won their freedom.

“We did.” Hawke heaves a sigh. “But I came back to tell you this.”

“Yes. I’m sorry,  _who_  was lying? And when?”

“The hissrad. Or—well, who knows what he is. All those things he said in the wagon about you being ‘clingy’ or what have you.” Hawke waves a dismissive hand. “A pack of lies. I can’t speculate on the reason—“  _oh no,_  Dorian thinks dryly,  _I’m sure you haven’t done a scrap of speculating,_ “—but there wasn’t a grain of truth in any of it.”

Dorian had put all this to bed, and now, as he finds it awakening once more, he tries to stuff it back under the covers. Too painful to think about. Much easier to leave it behind. “And I’m supposed to believe  _you_  on all this? Last I heard, you despised me. I imagine my continued emotional distress would be a source of great amusement.”

“Is that really the impression you’ve—“ Hawke pauses, then half-grins. “I suppose that’s nobody's fault but my own, isn’t it? Anyway, you’ve saved my life. And Fenris’s—twice. I’ll acknowledge that debt. So I am being honest with you. Maybe you can save the Qunari’s life on top of it all, before Leliana wrings him dry. She’s already had him a few weeks, and when she’s finished I doubt there’ll be much left to salvage.”

Dorian only stares for a moment, and the gratitude is distasteful in his mouth but he speaks it aloud anyway. “Thank you.”

“The hardest part is still ahead of you.” Hawke turns and starts descending the stairs. “He may try to hurt you again, thinking he’s protecting you. Some of us are stupid like that.”

Dorian stands there for a long while, the book balanced in his hands.

Then he sets it down and goes to sit by the window. There are too many thoughts swirling around in his head, and the sunset on the western faces of the Frostbacks is soothing.

——

He goes down into the dungeons that night.

It isn’t hard to find where Bull’s being held—Dorian was one of those who brought him in in the first place, and he’s directed there quickly enough. The hallway is long and winding, diving down into the mountain. Torches illuminate the way, although they’re spaced far apart, and Dorian passes through long patches of darkness as he goes. He finds himself wishing he could hide there, that he didn’t have to do this. That he’d never heard what Hawke told him. It wasn’t easy to take what he and Bull had and bury it—not easy, not easy at all; that was a pillar to him, a bastion of safety from whatever venomous glares or nasty remarks were pointed his way. No one much likes Tevinters, especially not ones who refuse to grovel or beg forgiveness.

Still, he knows how to be alone. He did it before, for a long while. It is…wearying, that much is true, and at times he is struck by a loneliness so great he must, to his never-ending shame, drink it away and pray to the Maker that the hangover the next morning is accompanied by a renewal of his self-sufficiency. That’s how he’s been since Bull declared in no uncertain terms his allegiance to the Qun, rather than the Inquisition.

Rather than Dorian.

Dorian thinks he has a couple of bottles of wine still stashed away in his quarters somewhere. Good. He may need them this very night.

He turns a bend and finds the end of the corridor.

Two guards, a man and a woman, lounge before a heavy wooden door. A tiny window near the top shows only blackness beyond. The guards exchange a look as he approaches, and the woman straightens. “What d’you want?”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Dorian says quietly. “In private, if you don’t mind.”

He’d expected a fight, although he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to give them one. So he’s surprised when the woman shrugs and jerks her head at her comrade. “Let’s give ‘em some privacy. You want us to let you in or just to do it from out here? He’s chained up, won’t get out anyways.”

“Oh. Er—I’ll go in, I think.”

So she unlocks the door with a sturdy key, and she and her comrade take their leave, walking out into the long, winding hallway.

Dorian stares into the dim cell, at the silhouette he sees outlined there in flickering firelight.  

Then he steps inside.

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. The room is small, illuminated only by the torches that pool around the threshold. And Bull is sitting there, at the back, his wrists manacled together, his leg shackled to the wall by a great black iron chain. He regards Dorian with one dull eye, narrowed in—suspicion, or distrust, or something.

“I wanted to—“ Dorian blurts out, and he stops there, any plan he had going in now lost utterly. The air is close and cool, humid around him. “ _Fasta vass,”_  he mutters.

“Dorian?”

Reinforced by a hard disbelief, a detached curiosity. Ah, so he’s not going to wail and weep and prostrate himself, begging for absolution. To be expected, really. “Yes, it’s me,” Dorian replies. “Surely it hasn’t been so long you’ve forgotten what I look like. No one else in Skyhold is anywhere near this well-dressed.”

Bull regards him a moment more, the distrust lingering. “What do you want this time?”

“This time?” Dorian frowns. “I’ve never been down here before. Which—well, I’m not sure I  _should_  apologize for that.”

“Right. My mistake.” Bull shifts, tilting his head back against the wall. His horns, which he kept polished as a point of pride, are dull now, the reflection of torchlight off them dim and diffuse. “So why are you here?”

“You lied to me.”

Bull snorts. “Yeah, I already told you that.”

“No, I mean when you said you didn’t care about me. You were lying.”

An exhausted laugh. “Are you  _still_  hung up on that? Sorry to break this to you, Vint, but—“

“Hawke told me. I understand he’s an expert liar himself, and I’d trust him to catch another such expert in the act.”

Dorian waits. Bull’s wisp-thin amusement fades fast. “He told you that, huh?”

“Yes. He did. And I realized you’d been spending all this time alone when you didn’t bloody have to.” Dorian discovers he’s angry, which is good. Better that than a weepy mess. He folds his arms. “So here I am to berate you for being a fool and an ass.”

Bull groans. “Fucking spare me, would you? Solitary sucks but at least I was free of your nagging.”

Dorian glances around the tiny cell. “I don’t understand why you’re still stashed away like this. I thought you were planning to cooperate.”

“I was. I did.” He shifts, the chains clinking a little. “Then she wanted to know more. Things I didn’t want to give up. So I haven’t given them up.”

Dorian rubs his eyes. “The Qunari are never going to come for you, you know that, don’t you? Not only are you locked up in Inquisition headquarters, but your superiors are all denying any knowledge of this blood magic incident. They’re sweeping it under the rug. They probably  _want_  you dead, so they’ll be rid of witnesses. How can you still insist on protecting them?”

“Because I’m—“

“Qunari, yes, yes, I know, Maker’s  _bones.”_ Dorian exhales, exasperated. “I feel sorry for Leliana, I imagine you’re the most obstinate subject she’s ever laid her hands on.”

Bull grins, a cruel twist of a thing. “That’s the idea.”

“So obstinate you refuse to acknowledge you’re fooling yourself.”

The grin disappears “Careful, Dorian.”

“You’re not Qunari. You’re not, Bull, that’s all there is to it.” Frustration. Good. He is in control of the situation. Businesslike. “I was there when you lost the Chargers. You wanted to save them, badly,  _so_  badly, even though you would have lost the Qunari in return. There was no  _certainty_  there. Quite the opposite. Everything afterward was just you trying to convince yourself of something that wasn’t true.”

“Wrong,” Bull rumbles out. “I had strayed from the Qun. Wasn’t my first time. I recognized it, and I corrected it. Quicker to do it on my own than to go back to the re-educators.”

Dorian cuts him off. “What do you feel when you think of the Chargers’ deaths?”

Bull narrows his eye. “They died as heroes.”

A gust of anger. “That’s the same exact line you say every time, and it doesn’t mean a bloody thing! What do you  _feel?”_

“I gave you my damn answer already!”

“How about me? What do you feel when you think of me?” Dorian puts on a mirthless, wicked grin. “Let me guess, I was just some alluring forbidden dalliance? Did the taboo of fucking a Tevinter excite you? Did my ravishing good looks seduce you away from the Qun?”

“Fuck off, Dorian!” Bull snarls. “I get enough interrogating without you crawling up my ass!”

Dorian flinches. Bull blinks, looks oddly abashed. Then he settles back against the wall, sullen. The interrogations. Dorian hadn’t thought about it. “What are they…” He trails off in the middle, his courage failing. But he plunges ahead. “What are they doing to you?”

Bull grunts. “The usual. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Hm. Your skill at lying seems to have dropped off some since we last spoke.”

“Fuck do you mean by that?”

“You’re unmarked. They clearly aren’t beating answers out of you.”

Bull fidgets, pulls his legs up to his chest. “Yeah, well.”

Dorian doesn’t say anything for a moment. He didn’t notice before—the room is dark, and he was too angry, too intent on taking Bull to task for his misdeeds. Now he sees how Bull’s eyes are sunken, skin drawn tight to his muscles—which are diminished, not from lack of use but from wasting.

“But they have been starving you,” Dorian mutters.

Bull doesn’t say anything.

“When was the last time you had anything to eat?” Another silence. Dorian presses. “Bull?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “How long’s it been since you brought me in?”

Dorian stares, dumbfounded. “It’s—it’s been seven weeks! It can’t have been that long, you’d be dead!”

“I’m Qunari. We can go a long time without eating.”

The cruelty of the act is an acid metal tang on his tongue. “I—I’m sorry. If I’d known I would have brought you food.”

Bull laughs, an effortful sound. “Come on, this isn’t the first fucking time you’ve seen me down here, you knew I looked like crap.”

Dorian pauses. Just like the mistake earlier. “Like I told you, I’ve never been down here.”

His lip curls in anger. Self-directed. “Yeah, whatever. Forgot.”

“Why do you keep thinking that? That I’ve come to see you?”

“Maybe the hunger. Can’t think all that great anymore.”

A creeping dread spiders up the back of Dorian’s neck. “Bull, what are they doing to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Please.” Dorian takes a halting step closer, then another. “Bull. Please.”

Easier from here to see the places where his body was soft before—his stomach, his hips—and how they’ve changed. No more gentle rolls now above his waistband; the  skin pulls taut over his withering muscles. He shifts, turning his shoulder as if to conceal himself from Dorian’s eyes. “She’s been trying to get in my head.”

Of course. He is, after all, the Iron Bull; the worst physical tortures would likely be little more than a tickle to him. “What do you mean?”

“She—makes me see things.”

“What? How? Not with—blood magic?”

He heaves a sigh, his ribs visible against his skin as his chest expands. “I know there’s drugs. And it might be just illusions. I get confused on the drugs, I think they’re real.” He quiets for a second. “But it sure as fuck feels like blood magic.”

“Bull…”

“Anyway, sometimes you’re there, when I’m seeing things. So I’m not actually sure if you’re real right now. Although most of the time you haven’t yelled at me this much.”

Dorian kneels, takes Bull’s manacled hands in his own. “I  _am_  real.”

Bull stares at his knees, unmoving.

“And I am yelling at you.”

That gets the flicker of a grin, a real one.

“Why do you cling to the Qun so tightly?” Dorian asks. “When it’s got nothing to give you anymore? What is it you’re afraid of?”

“What do you think, Dorian?” Bull retorts. “I’m afraid of losing my damn mind!”

“Well, let me reassure you: that won’t happen.”

“Yeah? And how would you know, _Vint?”_ Bull snarls at him. “You’re human. You don’t have this—thing, sitting in your head, like a rabid animal just waiting to rip you apart, you and everything else you lay your hands on. The Qun keeps it caged. Without that I go out of control.”

“I’m a mage,” Dorian says quietly.

Bull sits there, waits.

“Many nights I’m approached by demons. They always want something, of course, and they always offer something in return. Something exquisite. I’ve been doing this a while now, and most of the time I can deny them without undue effort. But there are nights when it’s…difficult. When I’m tired, and all my clever circumventions dry up on my tongue. Or I’m lonely, and my dreams of a happy future stop being important. And all the lessons I’ve recited, all the things I’ve told myself, they just…disappear. When the demon’s offer starts to look so very tempting. I could save Tevinter with that much power. Why shouldn’t I take it? And all that’s left, my last line of defense, is little old me.

“I am, as you say, only a human. How am I to stand against a demon? A creature of the Fade, ages older than I?” Dorian’s grip on Bull’s hands tightens. “Because I am Dorian Pavus, and I want to save Tevinter, but I also want to protect people, and the demon will stop me from doing that. I know who I am, and I am not a man who cedes control of myself to some alien will that would hurt those I care about. And that is why demons cannot and will never take me.” He takes a breath. “Forget this dusty old set of rules that has failed to shield you, despite how much you devote yourself to it.  _You_  are the one who will keep that rabid beast caged—in fact, you are the only one who can. So tell me, what do you want, Bull? What do  _you_  want?”

For a moment Bull says nothing. Then his face pulls tight, drawn in pain. “I want the Chargers back.  _Fuck,_  I miss them so bad.”

“I’m sorry,” Dorian murmurs. “They were a good company.”

“Yeah, they were.  _Fuck.”_  He knocks his head back against the stone wall. “I killed them. And they fucking trusted me. Krem, I hope there’s an afterlife just so when I get there you can kick my sorry ass. As many times as it takes.”

Dorian was there when it happened, and saw Bull’s agony that afternoon. Saw it later, too, in snatches when Bull didn’t know he was being watched. It is no less now than it was the day they died.

“I want you.”

Dorian’s breath catches in his chest, despite himself.

“Dorian. I want you. I fucking missed you. You and your preening and that sharp tongue of yours.” He grasps Dorian’s hand, although his grip is weak. “Why did you have to come down here? I tried to cut it off. I tried to keep you out of it. I’m going to die. We both know that.”

“No, you don’t—“ Dorian finds he is trembling, although he is not afraid nor on the edge of tears, only seized by an intensity he cannot express— “You don’t have to die. Tell Leliana you’re renouncing the Qun. Give her what she wants.”

“It’s not the Qun. I’m not fucking Qunari, look at me, who am I kidding?” He aims a grin at Dorian, squeezes his hand. “But I can’t tell her what she’s been asking for. Got too many friends who’ll pay for it. I can’t do that to anyone else. Too hard living with myself already.”

“Bull—“

“No. I’m sorry, Dorian.” His gaze slips down. “The Nightingale’s not a demon I can bargain with. I’m just a corpse she’s picking apart for scraps.”

Dorian makes a noise of disgust. “That is a— _repulsive_  image and yet—“

Then he straddles Bull and kisses him.

Bull’s lips are cracked and dry, and his hands go for Dorian’s waist but it’s not the powerful grip Dorian’s so accustomed to—they simply rest there, feeble. Yet still the comfort of it, the familiarity, is nearly unbearable. Dorian breaks away. “I’m going to save you. I don’t care what it takes,” he says. “I won’t let you die here.”

“You have to.” Bull may be diminished but his voice still carries an iron command. “You try and fight Red, she’ll lock you up too. Promise me, Dorian. You have to let this one go.”

Dorian snorts. “Nice try, but I think you know me too well for that. Anyway, I’m only going to talk to her.”

Bull lets out a growl. “Damnit, Dorian.”

“I’ve told you, we’re just talking.” He stands, straightens his robes, turns for the door. “It may be enough. Few can stand up to the combination of my dazzling charm and my radiant smile.”

“Wait—“

Dorian halts.

“Just stay here a minute, would you?” Bull mutters.

So Dorian sits by him again, and holds his hand, and leans on his bony shoulder. They stay like that for some moments. Bull is not as warm as he once was; instead his pale skin is nearly the same temperature as the cool underground air. Dorian is angry, not at Bull this time. The anger shifts and roils, ready to be used.

“Anything happens to you, I’m gonna be really pissed.”

“I imagine I wouldn’t be very happy about it either,” Dorian replies. “I’m not planning to throw myself heedlessly into Leliana’s path, you know.”

Bull grunts. “ _Really_ pissed.”

Dorian leans over and kisses him once more, then rises. “I will be back. I promise.”

Even as he walks out of the cell his mind is whirling, tossing forward possible defenses, combing through them, rejecting the ones that are too weak or too daring. He starts when he finds the two guards only a couple of yards outside the door. “Oh. Er—did you…” He decides it’s best not to draw attention to his embarrassing display of affection. “Is Leliana normally awake at this hour? I’d like to speak to her.”

“Don’t think so,” the woman answers. “She’s an early riser, though. Up around dawn most days.”

“Good. Thank you.” He strides forward. Then he has a few hours to come up with a plan, to think of rejoinders, counterarguments—

“Oi!”

Dorian turns. A small black missile flies through the air, and he catches it reflexively. It jangles. A ring of keys.

“You can take him with you.” The woman jerks her thumb at the open door. “One of those’ll do the shackles. Might have to carry him a bit, he can’t stand very well these days.”

_You can take him with you._

Dorian gapes. “I—I’m sorry, what?”

“He renounced the Qun. We both heard it.” She indicates her partner, who grins. “So he’s all yours.”

A reverberating call from inside the cell. “What the fuck?”

“Nightingale figures you got two uses,” the woman answers. “Giving us information about the Qunari—which, well, the extraction process will probably make you damn near useless for anything else. Or working for the Inquisition as a Tal-Vashoth. Which you are now. So. Go forth.”

“Hang on a moment.” Dorian stands frozen. “You heard him renounce the Qun? So you were…”

 _“Definitely_  spying.” She winks. “The two of you are really sweet together, makes my heart go all a-flutter—“

“All right, that’s enough,” he growls, and marches into the cell, his pulse thudding in his throat, sweat prickling over his back. For some reason he feels as if this is a trick, as if they’re going to lock him in here with Bull and break them both—

But then he realizes the trick is already done. That’s why they didn’t fight him when he showed up in the first place—he was a part of a plan. The Nightingale wanted Bull to renounce the Qun but couldn’t trust anything he said under duress. Nor could she send Dorian down herself, since Bull, observant as he is, might catch the ruse. No. It had to come from somewhere else…

Hawke. Hawke was the one who pointed out Bull's lies. Did Leliana tell him about the plan? No, she very much distrusts him. Did he know anyway?

Knowing him, probably. He did try to kill Bull, but this was a debt, he said, to Dorian. No small debt, either. But now it is paid in full.

Bull laughs as his shackles fall away, with more energy than Dorian would expect from a wasted body like that. “Fuck me! That’s the Red I know. Always playing every angle.”

“That implies I was played, a sentiment I do not greatly enjoy,” Dorian mutters. He slings Bull’s arm over his shoulders. “Can you stand?”

“Good question. Let’s see.”

He can, as it turns out, albeit only with considerable assistance. Dorian gasps. “You are— _extremely_ —heavy.”

“ ‘Bout to get heavier. Let’s go find me some  _food!”_

“Have fun, you two!” the woman calls after them.

Dorian notices she does not offer to help, so he staggers forward, bearing his burden alone. Bull is grinning as wide as he ever has.

“Nice to see you’re in such good spirits for a man so near death,” Dorian pants. 

“Why not? Got my freedom. Got my kadan. About to go clean out the kitchens. That’s a good day, if you ask me.”

“When you put it that way,” Dorian manages. “I suppose I can’t argue.”

Bull is quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

The soft globes of torchlight slip over them. “I am willing to forgive you, amatus. But you can’t push me away like that again. You can’t.”

“I won’t.” Bull leans down and kisses him on the cheek. “I’m yours, kadan.”


End file.
